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I do not find being “anti-IRA” offensive at all My only objection to this…
The England band were completely unaware they were providing the background music for anti-IRA songs during Tuesday’s friendly in Scotland, their leader has said. The band, loosely associated with the Football Association, unwittingly provided the tune for chants of “Fuck the IRA” in the first half of the 3-1 win at Celtic Park.
… is that it was ‘unwitting’ 😛
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The FA is perhaps the most PC organisation that I have come across, right down to football for 9 year olds, there is a whiff of PC like chlorine in a public swimming baths. It is hard to see how anyone could take ‘offence’ at this, I actually think that I prefer FIFA with all its interesting coves, rather than this bunch who manage be both PC and employ shaggers like Sven, the FA could not be more ludicrous, but this is sinister.
“The FA is perhaps the most PC organisation that I have come across”
Possibly. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the Scottish “Government” didn’t have a hand in the manufactured outrage over this. Sectarian songs and chants – which includes expressing the opinion that a gang of cold-blooded murderers should get fucked – are illegal in and near Scottish football grounds. Yes, really.
Now, I don’t deny that sectarianism is a problem in the west of Scotland, although not nearly to the extent that it is in Northern Ireland itself. But anyone who thinks that this is an appropriate – or even effective – response doesn’t deserve to be in power. And certainly doesn’t deserve a sovereign state of their own.
How do you find comments on the Grauniad website? They’re sure to be funny on this one.
I think it is a comments off piece. Funny how the English and ‘gers element of the Scots fans had common cause in the song, which is clearly ‘(I) fought the IRA‘, can’t see what the upset is about.
Sam, would you be able to tell me where the SNP types tend to sit on the ‘Old Firm’ issue? Is there any correlation between those and political parties. I always got the impression that Labour and Celtic had an overlap.
Certainly there used to be a very strong affinity between the Roman Catholic community and Labour, Mr Ed, but the Nats’ current boost owes a great deal to it breaking down. It’s no coincidence that outside Dundee (which has always been strongly Nationalist) their only successes in the referendum came in what used to be Labour’s heartlands. Partly Labour’s fault, obviously, but the SNP hasn’t been slow to court them. And I suppose it could be argued that treating all sectarian opinion equally, so that “fuck the IRA” becomes exactly equivalent to “fuck the queen”, doesn’t do them any harm in that regard.
Of course, given Rangers fans’ natural unionism, this means almost a reversal of the old order as far as Labour is concerned.
But I wouldn’t make too much of it. The point is that the guarantee that any Scottish party had of a block vote has broken. And official anti-sectarianism is very much an all-party thing. (There’s even a little badge which they all must wear under pain of public villification by their peers, rather like those AIDS ribbons a few years ago.) Which, as I say, up to a point is perfectly admirable. Nobody wants Glasgow to become Belfast. But for me, banning speech – or song – is that point.
IRA/SF are scum.
And the British establishment who tossed away the chance of victory against the IRA (which was infiltrated from top to bottom) are scum also.
P.C. scum.
You English are so ignorant (FA? FO!), no wonder the well-balanced Scots (chip on each shoulder) came so close to voting yes.
What are you blathering about?
Speaking of organised crime does anyone know about the Masnada?
I was watching a television show set in the 1930’s and when it came to corporate crime they made the Mafia look like a bunch of mincing Nancyboys.
Members of the Mafia can not openly be members of the Italian government – whatever some Italian ministers may be secretly connected to.
Members of IRA/SF are ministers in Northern Ireland – thanks to the treason of the British government establishment who de facto backed an organisations they could have destroyed.
I am old fashioned – I do not regard murder and treason as amusing.
It’s interesting what people will find offensive.
Anyone over a certain age would read the story and assume that the offensive thing about the chant was that it used a bad word. The fact that the Guardian, a respected family newspaper, actually printed the word is almost as bad.
But in a PC world, anything that smacks of racism is intolerable, and in the central belt in 21st century Scotland, Glasgow’s tribal sectarianism is as embarrassing as Apartheid in South African and segregation in the American deep south. And so it becomes offensive (and potentially a criminal offence) to publicly mock an incredibly evil organisation.
Of course, as any good Guardianista is bound to point out, it is not impossible that many of those who chanted their opposition to the IRA may have felt rather sympathetic to the UVF and the UFF, organisations that, to my mind at least, are no less evil than the IRA.
Well one Labour MP, Emily Thornberry (honourable member for Islington – for our overseas readers think trendy New York etc.) saw three English flag and a white van (for overseas think ‘pick-up’) whilst canvassing in Rochester in Kent, and was so surprised she posted a picture on Twitter, spinning it as if she’d been to Scotland and seen ripples from Nessie methinks but really it was the offensive sight of English flags (she called the British flags, but hey, on the same island).
http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/537925/Emily-Thornberry-MP-Rochester-England-Flag
Celtic have a long history of flags and songs openly supporting not just republicanism but specifically the Provisional IRA. To be quite frank, this is all part of the fun of being a Celtic fan. It’s curious to read a newspaper article by a journalist who doesn’t seem to know that.
England fans have quite an amusing set of songs expressing the contrary opinion. As a Catholic of Irish extraction, I’ve always laughed merrily (and indeed joined in) at the gleefully subversive humour when fans sing the hymn “Sing Hosannah to the King of Kings” with the words “no surrender to the IRA”. This is what happens at football games and is what makes them not only fun, but gloriously liberating too. Yet you often see exactly this song cited in newspapers as an example of reprehensible hooliganism. It’s a good example of a society which really can no longer see the difference between an “offensive” tweet and a kick in the head.
Mr G Adams on Equality and the purpose of it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-30186975
And the head of the Irish Football Association has apologised for singing a song about an IRA hunger striker in a pub in Dublin.
Thereby retracting his threat of legal action against anyone who published the video of him singing.
And the English FA is in the main only laughable, rather than sinister.